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Ask me anything about eCommerce (Ongoing)

Ivan2BAlive

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I looked at your website and am confused. Are you a dropshipping store or a local furniture store? Do you have all those items in stock that are on your website?

Do you get the furniture at a good price so that you can sell them for under retail?

Have you listed them on Offerup?
Answer to your first question, both. We have 3 makeshift car ports (tents) that we keep next to our house that stores our furniture and yes, the items listed on our website are are also located at our home. The garage is turned into a miniature store where people locally can come over and buy merchandise. Not having a brick-and-mortar store means no overhead, in turn, keep prices cheaper. As far as the dropshipping is concerned, we have the option to do that as well since we built our website via Shopify. We have the option to dropship up to 800 items for free since we're a client of Shopify.

Second question: We do get furniture at an incredibly great price and then turn around and sell them just below what everyone else is selling in the brick-and-mortar stores.

Third question: We are also listing our products on Offerup as well as Facebook Marketplace and Instagram.
 
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Deleted68316

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Hi @biophase .

Thank you for the post.

What about the following product (the only thing I see it's already very cheap): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CL11D7U/?tag=tff-amazonparser-20

I would make it PORTABLE, which means:
1- shorter
2- with a cap you can screw in order to close it
3- The goal is to make it a keychain. It would look like a simple and slick keychain.


Thank you for your posts. I find them really valuable. Especially your unique view on things.
 

biophase

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Hi @biophase .

Thank you for the post.

What about the following product (the only thing I see it's already very cheap): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CL11D7U/?tag=tff-amazonparser-20

I would make it PORTABLE, which means:
1- shorter
2- with a cap you can screw in order to close it
3- The goal is to make it a keychain. It would look like a simple and slick keychain.


Thank you for your posts. I find them really valuable. Especially your unique view on things.
Hi Claudek,

At $6.99, I don't see how you would make any money. Using the Amazon fulfillment calculator, your net proceeds would be $3.93.

So you need to do your math calculations and see if you have enough margin with shipping and storage. Then you need to determine what your PPC costs would be.

But my other question is. Would someone really want a zit popper key chain? You would get stopped at airport security with it too. Is there really a need for your improvements?

Untitled.png
 

biophase

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Answer to your first question, both. We have 3 makeshift car ports (tents) that we keep next to our house that stores our furniture and yes, the items listed on our website are are also located at our home. The garage is turned into a miniature store where people locally can come over and buy merchandise. Not having a brick-and-mortar store means no overhead, in turn, keep prices cheaper. As far as the dropshipping is concerned, we have the option to do that as well since we built our website via Shopify. We have the option to dropship up to 800 items for free since we're a client of Shopify.

Second question: We do get furniture at an incredibly great price and then turn around and sell them just below what everyone else is selling in the brick-and-mortar stores.

Third question: We are also listing our products on Offerup as well as Facebook Marketplace and Instagram.

I don't understand what you mean by being a client of Shopify.

It sounds like you have a local furniture arbitrage business. I don't think it can scale very well. Do you get sales through your website? If I had to keep this model. I would look at smaller accessories that I could sell along with the big furniture. So that when people pick up a sofa, you can show them vases or candles at no brainer prices. I would get those in bulk from China. I would also try to sell smaller items on the website via shipping and basically migrate my business slowly over to online, but using the large furniture to drive traffic to it.
 
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Deleted68316

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Hi Claudek,

At $6.99, I don't see how you would make any money. Using the Amazon fulfillment calculator, your net proceeds would be $3.93.

So you need to do your math calculations and see if you have enough margin with shipping and storage. Then you need to determine what your PPC costs would be.

But my other question is. Would someone really want a zit popper key chain? You would get stopped at airport security with it too. Is there really a need for your improvements?

View attachment 35795
Thank you Biophase.

I thought about it because I sometimes have zits during the day. And instead of squeezing them and irritating the skin, I find it helpful to have a needle or something on the way for emergencies.

Yes, for airports it is not feasible.

Based on my feelings and in what you say it may be something to breakeven, in my point of view.

I would buy it at least.
 

Tim001

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Hi Biophase and others - Fulfillment - Can anyone recommend or share their experience with fulfillment services. I currently have an item I sell via FBA. Outside of amazon, with my other sales channels I fulfill myself, about 600 a month. I reached out to Shopify, but seems it's still an invite only for their fulfillment service right now. My item is quite small 8oz, 6x10 need no prep needed. I just had an idea on getting this item into dropshipping catalogues (sprocket etc..) as a supplier, so would really like the convince of a fulfillment service. Thoughts, Recommendations?
 

biophase

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Hi Biophase and others - Fulfillment - Can anyone recommend or share their experience with fulfillment services. I currently have an item I sell via FBA. Outside of amazon, with my other sales channels I fulfill myself, about 600 a month. I reached out to Shopify, but seems it's still an invite only for their fulfillment service right now. My item is quite small 8oz, 6x10 need no prep needed. I just had an idea on getting this item into dropshipping catalogues (sprocket etc..) as a supplier, so would really like the convince of a fulfillment service. Thoughts, Recommendations?
I don’t use them and wouldn’t generally recommend them. But your simple product, should be easy for a fulfillment company to ship.
 
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Bora.s

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Hi @biophase ,

I have a question. I am selling a dog product on Amazon.de successfully since 2016, I have created that listing and have a brand registry in Europe.

Somebody listed my product and changed it completely on Amazon.com around April 2020 to sell a different dog product. One seller is selling actively this different product, even under a different brand name in a different product category.

I reported this seller, but Amazon thing everything is ok, they just checked the USA listing, they did not check the European listing I assume.

I am unable to gain control over the listing in the USA ( I originally created it in Germany). I am filing complaints after complaints on sellercentral.com without success. I tried it also on sellercentral.de

I want to stop the other seller to misuse my listing and I want to sell my product on Amazon.com, but I need to fix the product listing first.

What am I doing wrong?

Update 17.2.2021 : Today an Amazon global selling team Manager, contacted me to offer help. I am keeping my fingers crossed....
 
Last edited:

23Infinity

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Hi @biophase ,

Somebody listed my product and changed it completely on Amazon.com around April 2020 to sell a different dog product. One seller is selling actively this different product, even under a different brand name in a different product category.

I've been noticing an uptick of (mostly Chinese) sellers repurposing old listings/ASINs with built up for the purposes of selling their product. They use an ASIN of a similar product but sell a different one, and benefit from the 1000's of reviews on the discontinued ASIN. Really scummy black hat practice.
 

Ing

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Wewant to set up a nutritional supplement dropship shop.

Why that niche:
its quite big.
Many competitors without own branding. Only a domain as a difference.
So many customers with studios at home.

I looked for a supplier with dropship and decent margins ( that I can give at least the usual low prizes found on the marketplaces) for a long time and now I found one. Thats the reason why.


Now I m building.
Wordpress, Woocommerce.
I remeber, that @biophase described what theme necessary to have at least anywhere in the forum. And what plugins. But I didn’t find it.
maybe a small hint?

To get some customers, I think, I will post my (small) experience with nutritional supplements in other niches than bodybuilding.

And than try some google ads.
 
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JAJT

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Many competitors without own branding. Only a domain as a difference.

Either I don't misunderstood your niche idea (quite possible), or you haven't really looked into this very far.

Nutritional supplements is one of the most competitive, branded, and advertised niche on the internet. Right up there with skincare (which I was in and very happily got out of).

The margins are absolutely huge on the product side of things but the competition is fierce enough that your Net after marketing/advertising/shipping/storage/etc may very well be negative if you don't know exactly what you're doing.

Most folks I know who did well in these niches basically grew it to the point that it was worth selling, sold, and then started a company that they were far more happy with.
 

biophase

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Wewant to set up a nutritional supplement dropship shop.

Why that niche:
its quite big.
Many competitors without own branding. Only a domain as a difference.
So many customers with studios at home.

I looked for a supplier with dropship and decent margins ( that I can give at least the usual low prizes found on the marketplaces) for a long time and now I found one. Thats the reason why.


Now I m building.
Wordpress, Woocommerce.
I remeber, that @biophase described what theme necessary to have at least anywhere in the forum. And what plugins. But I didn’t find it.
maybe a small hint?

To get some customers, I think, I will post my (small) experience with nutritional supplements in other niches than bodybuilding.

And than try some google ads.
i’m not sure I understand your plan either. Are you planning to drop ship other brands? Or are you only drop shipping one brand?

Either way I think this is going to be very tough. What is your plan on your website to have customer trust? If you are drop shipping no name brands I think it will be very hard to get people to buy supplements from brands that they don’t know which have no reviews.
 

biophase

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Wewant to set up a nutritional supplement
Many competitors without own branding. Only a domain as a difference.
So many customers with studios at home.
You mentioned the reason as having many customers without a brand and only a domain. Isn’t this what you are going to be?
 
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Guest-5ty5s4

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Do you dropship any of your products, or is dropshipping in general just bad practice?

Is it a good idea to mix your own products with dropshipped products on an online store, or not?
 

Ing

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I want to have all the great brands in my shop, which are in all the other shops, too.
No own products.Yes, thats right.
I want to dropship and figure out to run that shop automatically.

My plan is to learn the basics and the procedure that way.

The plan is to be able to figure out that e-commerce secret.
 

Ing

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You mentioned the reason as having many customers without a brand and only a domain. Isn’t this what you are going to be?
Yes, it is.
Imo so I can make an onlineshop for supplements and than have the same prerequisites as the others.
The entry may be not high here and it will not be my fastlane business. But was your first?
i’m not sure I understand your plan either. Are you planning to drop ship other brands? Or are you only drop shipping one brand?

Either way I think this is going to be very tough. What is your plan on your website to have customer trust? If you are drop shipping no name brands I think it will be very hard to get people to buy supplements from brands that they don’t know which have no reviews.
Only the common, big brands.
Look for sportsmen in different sports niches and present ways to improve muscle building.
Did you know, that Whey every day accellerates the recovery of a ACL injury significantly? I had to dig in that and not only physically, but psychologically I really could keep myself on track of working on my legs much more with the right Whay product.
Ask me for that If youl need it!

Btw. Can the Woocommerce shop be done propperly with the free Woocommerce plugin And themes?
 
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biophase

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I want to have all the great brands in my shop, which are in all the other shops, too.
No own products.Yes, thats right.
I want to dropship and figure out to run that shop automatically.

My plan is to learn the basics and the procedure that way.

The plan is to be able to figure out that e-commerce secret.
So were you able to get some great brands to drop ship for you? I assume that’s a yes or you wouldn’t be doing this.

I just don’t really understand this concept these days given that most of these brands probably sell on Amazon.

Suppose your site is called supplement warehouse, and you carry all the well-known brands. Are you competing on price? How are you going to compete with the two day fulfillment via dropship because your orders will always be a day late unless you connect to them through some type of api.
 

Ing

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So were you able to get some great brands to drop ship for you? I assume that’s a yes or you wouldn’t be doing this.

I just don’t really understand this concept these days given that most of these brands probably sell on Amazon.

Suppose your site is called supplement warehouse, and you carry all the well-known brands. Are you competing on price? How are you going to compete with the two day fulfillment via dropship because your orders will always be a day late unless you connect to them through some type of api.
Yes the wholeseller propagates to have all big brands.
The connection is what I want to figure out.
And we be competing on the price is one way to get sells, too.
 

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Yes the wholeseller propagates to have all big brands.
The connection is what I want to figure out.
And we be competing on the price is one way to get sells, too.
Supplement retail is a dying industry...

Online supplement shops/distributors are also dying.

Customers either purchase direct on the brands website, or go on amazon. I don't remember the last time I went to bodybuilding.com or Popeyes supplements to get protein powder, protein bars etc.

GNC is closing retail stores yet they're investing heavily on their amazon presence. I've been watching them the past 6 months as some of my products overlap with theirs. They have been releasing multiple new SKUs almost monthly.

I just don't see how you'd have any chance at success with a supplement drop shipping store/site given how some of the big names are failing. If you were talking about a distributor for retail and such, that would be a different story.

With that said, if you do proceed, please prove me wrong! Nonetheless, rooting for you.
 
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Ing

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Ok, you shoot me.
I tested some supplements on ebay-Kleinanzeigen, which is a marketplace in Germany.
My offer was deleted and I got a write of a kind lawyer.

It has to do with food, pharmacy only and so on.

Not easy. Wasn’t the only thing I wanted to learn setting up an onlineshop with WP and WOOC..?

Frustrated before started.

Thanks for your writing.
 

biophase

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Ok, you shoot me.
I tested some supplements on ebay-Kleinanzeigen, which is a marketplace in Germany.
My offer was deleted and I got a write of a kind lawyer.

It has to do with food, pharmacy only and so on.

Not easy. Wasn’t the only thing I wanted to learn setting up an onlineshop with WP and WOOC..?

Frustrated before started.

Thanks for your writing.
So you are saying eBay doesn’t allow supplements?

But I thought you were planning to sell on your own store. I’m not sure if will commerce would do what you want I would go with shopify.
 

Ing

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So you are saying eBay doesn’t allow supplements?

But I thought you were planning to sell on your own store. I’m not sure if will commerce would do what you want I would go with shopify.
Ebay-kleinanzeigen(.)de is different to ebay(.)de. Or .com
Its a different marketplace . More like Craiglist.
 
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Deleted58089

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Do you find product prices listed on Alibaba to be a good estimate to what it will eventually cost to buy in bulk?

Or are they usually a bit overpriced?
 

biophase

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Do you find product prices listed on Alibaba to be a good estimate to what it will eventually cost to buy in bulk?

Or are they usually a bit overpriced?
I think they are all over the place. It’s really hard to tell without asking them for a quote.

Sometimes they’re underpriced to get you to send them a request. With many of them the price range listed is very large, like $5 to $10. That’s a huge range if you expect your final product to be selling for $25.
 
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Deleted58089

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Things are getting much more tough in my country and I’ll explain why:

1. We are just recovering from an economic crisis and we are really price sensitive.

2. Our Amazon equivalent is a price comparison website.
This is where we buy our stuff from, and for a shop to be higher on a listing and to get sales it has to lower its prices.

So price has become the only differentiating factor for a great number of shops.

(I wonder what their profit margins can be.)

3. Furthermore, many Chinese are renting large warehouses and massively importing all kinds of products from China, subsidised by the Chinese government.
*In many cases they are paying two years worth of rent up front.

All these have led to non branded products prices being very low.
This doesn’t mean that the quality is top notch though.

I have seen many products being sold by sellers, not wholesalers, for just a couple of euros more than the average price on Alibaba.


In order to make a profit selling an improved product I’d have to sell for at least two to three times more than the price they’ve been selling at.


*The only positive is that the vast majority of sellers aren’t focused, or even aware of, on private labeling and creating a brand.
And most e-commerce websites are just generic ones selling anything they can get their hands on. (because they’re leveraging the price comparison website and they’re playing a volume game)
 
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Hi biophase,

How do you promote your e-commerce stores? I'm assuming Google Ads/Google Shopping Ads?

I've got plenty of experience using Google Ads for promoting all kinds of offers, generating leads, etc, but I've never used it to promote physical products from an e-commerce store.

Am I right in thinking that Google Shopping Ads (Shopping Campaigns) is the more accurate choice for promoting physical products on Google, rather than the generic Google Ads (Search Campaigns), which can be used for pretty much anything you want?

The reason why I'm asking is because I don't see anyone using search campaigns to advertise their products in my niche, but there are plenty of Google shopping ads showing the products that I sell.

Thanks for your help

Also @Andy Black and @Phikey will probably know more about this as well, so would appreciate your input guys.
 

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Hi biophase,

How do you promote your e-commerce stores? I'm assuming Google Ads/Google Shopping Ads?

I've got plenty of experience using Google Ads for promoting all kinds of offers, generating leads, etc, but I've never used it to promote physical products from an e-commerce store.

Am I right in thinking that Google Shopping Ads (Shopping Campaigns) is the more accurate choice for promoting physical products on Google, rather than the generic Google Ads (Search Campaigns), which can be used for pretty much anything you want?

The reason why I'm asking is because I don't see anyone using search campaigns to advertise their products in my niche, but there are plenty of Google shopping ads showing the products that I sell.

Thanks for your help

Also @Andy Black and @Phikey will probably know more about this as well, so would appreciate your input guys.
Best to try it. We’ve had some clients where Dynamic Search Ads beat the Google Shopping Ads, others where it’s vice versa, and yet others where hand crafted paid search ads won. I can’t see a pattern so try all three.
 

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